Monthly Archives: July 2024

Modeling Fuzzy Fidelity: Using Microsimulation to Explore Age, Period, and Cohort Effects in Secularization

Here’s a link to the full article; the abstract follows below.

This article presents a microsimulation that explores age, period, and cohort effects in the decline of religiosity in contemporary societies. The model implements a well-known and previously empirically validated theory of secularization that highlights the role of “fuzzy fidelity,” i.e., the percentage of a population whose religiosity is moderate (Voas 2009). Validation of the model involved comparing its simulation results to shifts in religiosity over 9 waves of the European Social Survey. Simulation experiments suggest that a cohort effect, based on weakened transmission of religiosity as a function of the social environment, appears to be the best explanation for secularization in the societies studied, both for the population as a whole and for the proportions of religious, fuzzy, and secular people. 

Religion in Multidisciplinary Perspective: Philosophical, Theological, and Scientific Approaches to Wesley J. Wildman

Religion in Multidisciplinary Perspective provides the first comprehensive treatment of the work of Wesley J. Wildman, one of the most inventive thinkers in the field of religious studies. Scholars with expertise in philosophical, theological, and scientific approaches to the study of religion offer critical and constructive engagements with Wildman’s astonishingly creative and integrative oeuvre. The essays address themes that will be of interest to those concerned with the current state of scholarship on religion from a variety of disciplines, including philosophy, theology, ethics, psychology, sociology, anthropology, and others. The volume concludes with a response by Wildman. Find out more here.

Modeling Religion Published

LeRon Shults and I wrote a book about the long history of human civilization and religion. It uses computational social simulation to reconstruct the deep past and to peer a little way ahead. Ten years in the making, this book represents an incredibly satisfying collaboration with a gifted scholar, and a marvelous friend. Over the years, I have concluded that these kinds of friendships are one of the best parts of the scholarly life. But it’s also cool to introduce a book of this kind. Computational humanities scholars and computational social scientists will naturally be drawn to a book featuring computational social simulations. But the book is for everyone interested in the human journey on planet earth since the birth of civilization, including the roles religion has played along the way. Read more here.